http://thinkprogress.org/2010/04/06/exxon-tax/ Last week, Forbes magazine published what the top U.S. corporations paid in taxes last year. “Most egregious,” Forbes notes, is General Electric, which “generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.” Big Oil giant Exxon Mobil, which last year reported a record $45.2 billion profit, paid the most taxes of any corporation, but none of it went to the IRS: Exxon tries to limit the tax pain with the help of 20 wholly owned subsidiaries domiciled in the Bahamas, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands that (legally) shelter the cash flow from operations in the likes of Angola, Azerbaijan and Abu Dhabi. No wonder that of $15 billion in income taxes last year, Exxon paid none of it to Uncle Sam, and has tens of billions in earnings permanently reinvested overseas. Mother Jones’ Adam Weinstein notes that, despite benefiting from corporate welfare in the U.S., Exxon complains about paying high taxes, claiming that it threatens energy innovation research. Pat Garofalo at the Wonk Room notes that big corporations’ tax shelter practices similar to Exxon’s shift a $100 billion annual tax burden onto U.S. taxpayers. In fact, in 2008, the Government Accountability Office found that “two out of every three United States corporations paid no federal income taxes from 1998 through 2005.” How long would it take to get rid of the deficit if these companies were taxed more efficiently?
Shhh…don’t rile up the Republicans on this board. The deficit is all the fault of Obama , the middle class and the poor. Don’t you know that Corporations like Exxon and Halliburton and .01 percent of Americans carry the entire tax burden of this country? You socialist communist you!
“How long would it take to get rid of the deficit if these companies were taxed more efficiently?” But how can you force such international companies to pay tax in the US? Exxon in particular must have thousands of projects all over the world that it can structure with JVs etc making it very difficult to tie back to the US. Whoever is attempting to rewrite the tax code will have to be pretty smart to try to out think the teams of tax experts advising the likes of XOM.
Isn’t it always individuals who end up paying the tax anyways? If Exxon is forced to pay taxes to Uncle Sam do you think out of the kindness of their heart they’ll just eat the cost…no they pass it on to the consumer.
Why do you hate America?
To the poster - what bothers you more - corporations that employ thousands of Americans with decent high paying jobs using legal tax shelter schemes to benefits its owners (i.e. folks like us whom as shareholders benefit from their performance) OR the 40% of tax filers that PAY NO FEDERAL INCOME TAXES!!! Something tells me you have no problem with 40% of filers not paying a dime while I get robbed (any tax above 20% is confiscatory)…but of course it is the rich not paying their fair share, right?
dmnyc Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > To the poster - what bothers you more - > corporations that employ thousands of Americans > with decent high paying jobs using legal tax > shelter schemes to benefits its owners (i.e. folks > like us whom as shareholders benefit from their > performance) OR the 40% of tax filers that PAY NO > FEDERAL INCOME TAXES!!! Something tells me you > have no problem with 40% of filers not paying a > dime while I get robbed (any tax above 20% is > confiscatory)…but of course it is the rich not > paying their fair share, right? I see that the faux news brainwashing is working well…BTW the same companies are subisidized by the very taxes you pay.
double
I just checked XOM’s income statement on Factset (Marcus: you probably don’t know what Factset is; it’s something financial professionals use). The story does check out. However, you left out some core details 2009 EBT: $27.6B 2009 Foreign Taxes: $15.1B They aren’t skirting taxes – they pay a significant chunk of earnings out in total taxes (don’t know exact cash taxes though). Exxon is a global company – They conduct a huge chunk of their operations overseas. Why should they not pay their taxes overseas? While I agree that a US domiciled company should pay more in US Taxes, I have to admit that the implementation is a little tricky. The US tax code is written by bureaucrats. FYI Marcus: The Tea Party people would agree 100% with you on this
Hire Nequity to do an aggressive transfer pricing audit on MNCs.
@dmnyc, You’re comparing apples to oranges here. Individual income taxes differs from corporate income taxes. Each time an individual gets a paycheck income taxes are already taken out and when individuals file income taxes there is simply a reconciliation with the Federal govt. as to whether or not they overpaid in income taxes. Your assertion that over 40% of taxpayers pay no federal income tax is misleading and I would add inaccurate. What you want to say is that during the reconciliation we call tax time 40% of taxpayers did not underpay the federal govt. in income taxes. Let me know if you have information to the contrary or if I’m missing your point.
Zokeseh- I don’t have time to dig but you are wrong about dmnyc’s comment. I don’t know exact numbers and the 40% may be an exaggeration, but many people have 0 or negative tax liabilities. and that doesn’t mean bc they payed out of their checks- it means if they did they get it back often with additional refundable credits. Here’s a link- its for 2006 bbut you can prob find more recent in the same site. http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/1410.html
joemontana Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I just checked XOM’s income statement on Factset > (Marcus: you probably don’t know what Factset is; > it’s something financial professionals use). So you know how to read an income statement on Factset, you’re so smart. You’re probably one of those highly paid WS “financial professionals” we read about. The main reason Exxon is so profitable is the fact that it is “Too big to fail” protected (and not just domiciled in) by the US military, Fed … Do you think the dumb corrupt idiots ruling the Middle East or Nigeria don’t know that ? They should pay taxes to this country in return for the competitive advantage they get based on this protection.
Being exempt from income tax does not mean you’re exempt from federal taxes. Everyone who works is liable for payroll taxes, contributions to Medicare and Social Security that come out of every paycheck. There are also excise taxes on some goods and services, most notably the 18.4 cents per gallon tax on gasoline. The CBO found that earners in the lowest quintile, where most of those with no income tax liability fall, shouldered 4.3 percent of the payroll tax burden in 2005 and 11.1 percent of the excise taxes. Their effective tax rate (which is calculated by dividing taxes paid by total income) in those categories, according to the CBO, was in fact significantly higher than the rate of the top quintile, although that top one-fifth of the population had a much higher effective tax rate for individual and corporate income taxes.
All the data to support my claim that 40% pay NET NO FEDERAL INCOME TAXES (please note i said federal income taxes) is right here (see link below)…to whomever said that federal income taxes are deducted from every paycheck - of course they are but if refunds/credits/subsidies outweigh the annual tax liability then the treasury on a NET basis has gotten NIL from that individual…the number is actually 43% and it is ASTONISHING…which way do you think the 43% will vote when they have no hand in the costs of governance - it creates a perment constituency in perpetuity…and yes, I have a MUCH bigger problem with these 43% than I do the likes of any corporation and also to add - I am against all corporate subsidies of any kind (starting with energy companies) http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/numbers/displayatab.cfm?Docid=2276&DocTypeID=7
marcus phoenix Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Being exempt from income tax does not mean you’re > exempt from federal taxes. Everyone who works is > liable for payroll taxes, contributions to > Medicare and Social Security that come out of > every paycheck. There are also excise taxes on > some goods and services, most notably the 18.4 > cents per gallon tax on gasoline. The CBO found > that earners in the lowest quintile, where most of > those with no income tax liability fall, > shouldered 4.3 percent of the payroll tax burden > in 2005 and 11.1 percent of the excise taxes. > Their effective tax rate (which is calculated by > dividing taxes paid by total income) in those > categories, according to the CBO, was in fact > significantly higher than the rate of the top > quintile, although that top one-fifth of the > population had a much higher effective tax rate > for individual and corporate income taxes. ??.. then you have to use the same logic for corps too. The OP says "ExxonMobil paid no **federal income tax** in 2009 " You think Exxon pays no FICA/ parol, SSDI, etc? You cannot bring it up for one and not the other…
I stand corrected; I can admit when I’m off target. I thought they were calculating things differently. Nice to not pay income tax at all; but probably not nice to make so little for such an event to occur.
I think you would be surprised to learn that the 43% are hardly destitute as many folks would like you to believe - it’s all about what they are choosing to declare as income - if they did a means test I think you would be shocked…
marcus phoenix Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Being exempt from income tax does not mean you’re > exempt from federal taxes. Everyone who works is > liable for payroll taxes, contributions to > Medicare and Social Security that come out of > every paycheck. There are also excise taxes on > some goods and services, most notably the 18.4 > cents per gallon tax on gasoline. The CBO found > that earners in the lowest quintile, where most of > those with no income tax liability fall, > shouldered 4.3 percent of the payroll tax burden > in 2005 and 11.1 percent of the excise taxes. > Their effective tax rate (which is calculated by > dividing taxes paid by total income) in those > categories, according to the CBO, was in fact > significantly higher than the rate of the top > quintile, although that top one-fifth of the > population had a much higher effective tax rate > for individual and corporate income taxes. WEAK: If you want to get fancy, you should include sales taxes, capital gains taxes & property taxes. Whatever hack populist website you copied that paragraph from clearly cherry-picked stats. What proportion of capital gains and property taxes are paid by the lower quintiles?
Do you pay sales or property tax to the federal gov’t? I hope not… LT capital gains is a tiered tax as well – including a 0% (!) tier.